Walmart's head of AI acceleration, product and design riffed on OpenAI ChatGPT and Google Gemini for agentic commerce, transformation, the retailer's role in the AI economy and the future of customer experience and why shoppers will "be doing a lot less scrolling."
Speaking at the ICR Conference, Walmart's Daniel Danker, Executive Vice President of AI Acceleration, Product & Design, recapped a busy week on the agentic commerce front. Walmart announced a partnership with Google revolving around Gemini agentic commerce efforts. The retail giant already had a big partnership with OpenAI's ChatGPT commerce efforts.
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"This is the year where tinkering becomes transformation," said Danker. "We will be delivering transformative experiences in commerce."
Will Walmart be disintermediated by AI agents? Danker wasn't worried. He said:
"I see this very clearly as a growth opportunity. There are a few key components that make this a growth opportunity that we've been very intentional about, and which I think set us up really well to serve customers even as the environments shift. One, it goes back to that combination of assortment, price and speed. That combination means that Walmart shows up a lot inside of Gemini and ChatGPT because we offer such a complete package for customers. That doesn't just serve one need but serves a whole bunch of needs.
Two, the approach of having their agents work together with our agent and creating an experience, a Walmart-powered experience that shows up directly inside of those environments means that we're orchestrating an intelligent handoff between the products so -- rather than being invisible on the customer's journey."
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Danker said AI agents from Google and OpenAI ultimately work with Walmart's Sparky shopping agent. Walmart could be co-opting the AI platforms instead of being disrupted by them. Walmart is positioning itself as the execution and fulfilment backbone of AI discovery and commerce.
"It's very early days in terms of how those integrations work. With Google we're essentially having their AI agent, Gemini, partner with our AI agent to create a unified shopping journey. And that's a fancy way of saying that when a customer discovers something on Gemini, Gemini might recommend a new TV, a wine stain remover, et cetera, it calls up our agent and enables us to offer the customer a very familiar and personalized experience directly within Gemini. So almost imagine it like a window inside of Gemini that -- where our shopping agent kicks in and helps you complete that purchase," said Danker.
Danker said Walmart's goal is to know the customer and provide an experience wherever they are. And shopping behavior is also more practical. The promise of agentic AI isn't necessarily finding new customers as well as it is automating shopping tasks. "We understand customers so well that we know that they're probably running out of laundry detergent. It's also recognizing that because they tend to buy a gallon of milk, they're probably in a 4-person household, so they're probably going through laundry detergent at a certain pace. And so, we know the right moment to recommend that laundry detergent. Agentic AI will then just go ahead and send you the laundry detergent before you even run out of it. So that's the promise. We're on a journey toward it. We're not quite there yet, but we're moving fast," explained Danker.
What's the future of agentic commerce?
Danker was asked about the future of agentic commerce and the bet is that it will be extremely practical. Here's what he said:
Practical wins. "This all really does come back down to customer problems that we all know, we all experience. So, for us, AI really needs to have purpose. And our entire strategy and plan with AI is built with a purpose that we think needs to be extremely practical. It doesn't need to be overcomplicated. Now the technology is complicated. The technology is incredible. The customer problems we need to solve are very practical. And so, the whole road map is built around those," said Danker.
Personalization is the experience. "if you look back a few years from now at the product are going to be that it truly feels personal, that it actually understands not just that individual shopping journey, but it understands your household, your behaviors, your dietary needs, your health needs, the community in which you live. So, it will feel much more personal. We've been using this word personalization for a little bit too long so it feels like we've done that already. But I would argue that we've just barely scratched the surface on personalization, and AI is going to take us to a new place there," said Danker.
Immersive. Danker said that e-commerce was taking a panoramic view of a physical store and trying to staple it to a small screen. Every category from fashion to pet food will be different. Shopping devices will evolve and include devices such as smart glasses. "We're going to be doing a lot less scrolling. Those experiences are going to become more human, more connected," said Danker.
